Monday, November 30, 2015

Staunton, November 30 – The Minsk
Accords are the diplomatic equivalent of Vladimir Putin’s “little green men,”
Andrey Illarionov says. Like the latter, these pieces of paper have as their
goal the destruction of Ukraine; and they are even more effective because they
enjoy the support not only of the leaders of Western countries but of the
Ukrainian government itself.

Russia lacks the resources to launch
a full-scale attack on Ukraine, Illarionov says, but that does not mean that it
will not continue its aggression against Ukraine. It isn’t just that the
Kremlin now has to fight on two fronts. “There are simply no forces. At
present. The current Russian army cannot conquer Ukraine.”

But Putin’s goal remains unchanged –
blocking Ukraine’s move away from Moscow towards Europe, and “besides open war,
there are many methods of achieving it: in particular, besides little green
men, there are little green papers,” in this case the Minsk Accords which help
Putin toward his goal.

Putin’s goal, everyone must
remember, Illarionov says, “is not the raising of Russian flags in Kyiv and the
declaration of [Ukraine] as the territory of the Russian Federation but only
the establishment of control over the Ukrainian state and its political elite
by means of its own people in Kyiv offices.”

“The Minsk Accords are one of the
most effective instruments for the achievement of Putin’s goal,” Illarionov
continues, since under them are the signatures of senior Ukrainian officials,
and also on the side of Putin are such people as Merkel, Hollande, and Obama
who also demand the observance and fulfillment of the Minsk agreements.”

The existence of these accords has
obscured for some the fact that “Putin’s operation to establish control over
Ukraine has not been completed and that he has in his hands all the cards.More than that, people from the Ukrainian
side are actively helping him by agreeing to fulfill the Minsk Accords.”

Indeed, it appears some in Ukraine
appear to have forgotten that Russia has invaded them and thus have forgotten
what is required when one is dealing with enemies as well as allies.During a war, “one must not give amnesty to
terrorists, but under ‘the Minsk peace’ please do;” during a war, “one must not
change a constitution on the demand of the aggressor, but under ‘the Minsk
peace,’ do so as much as you like.”

Asked if he was calling on Ukraine
to “openly fight with the Russian Federation,” Illarionov replies by asking “would
you prefer to gradually lose part of your territory by the path of ‘the Minsk
peace?’” And can Ukrainians long tolerate a situation in which some of their
leaders have not gotten rid of their investments in the land of the invaders?

The Turkish government wasn’t afraid
to shoot down a Russian warplane that violated Turkey’s airspace, he observes.
But again was challenged by his interviewer who suggested that “NATO stands
behind Erdogan, but there is no one behind Ukraine,” Illarionov says that
Ukraine could in any case only count on itself but that that didn’t change the
calculus.

Those in Kyiv who think there exists
“an anti-Putin coalition” in Europe are deluding themselves. “Who is in it?”
Illarionov asks rhetorically. “Holland who just returned from Moscow? Or Merkel
who criticized [Kyiv] for turning off the electricity to [Russian occupied]
Crimea?”

Staunton, November 30 – Pavel Basanets,
a retired intelligence officer who attracted attention in 2007 when he accused
Vladimir Putin of violating his oath, is callling on Russian officers to
disobey criminal order from the Kremlin leader to attack in Syria so that with
their blood, Putin can support his fellow dictator and control the flow of oil.

In an appeal posted on Kasparov.ru
today, Basanets says that at no point during his 17 year career as an
intelligence officer was he ever given a criminal order, one that if he had
carried it out would have violated his “officer’s honor, oath and conscience” (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=565C3279AEB3E).

And that makes it especially
unpleasant for him to admit that “a certain part of the contemporary officer
corps … is prepared to fulfill any order of the supreme command,” regardless of
their oaths, first in Ukraine and now in Syria, and who thus become cannon
fodder for whoever is in power.

Don’t these officers recognize that
they have been given “criminal orders” and that “the entire world considers
Russia an outcast,” with not a single “significant country” recognizing the
annexation of Crimea as legitimate? And don’t they see that “the newly declared
fuehrer, insteqad of seeking friends and allies, continues to search for ‘enemies’
in the entire world?”

“Russian officers! Perhaps you
support the call of that madman clown ‘to launch a nuclear strike’ on Istanbul?
Perhaps your mental capacities do not permit you to understand that the
existing regime in Russia is leading the country and the planet to a nuclear
catastrophe? And you are prepared to die for Zhirinovsky … or so Putin can stay
in the Kremlin longer?”

The LDPR leader, of course, is being
well paid for his madness, “but how much will be paid to the family of an officer
who fulfills a Criminal Order? Were you prepared for big money to kill
Ukrainians and citizens of independent Ukraine? Are you prepared to give your
life for the international criminal Bashar Asad?”

“In Suria, your blood will
be exchanged for oil which will then be told and money which doesn’t smell will
be received” but not by you but by Putin and his allies. Russian officers, he
continues, “reflect deeply on WHY during the time of Putin’s rule Russia has
become impoverished and the entire world has become our potential enemy and
opponent?”“Are you prepared to shed
your blood for the fuehrer, his ambitions and his desire to remain in the
Kremlin and in the final analysis for oil?”If you are, Basanets says, calculate how little your funerals will cost
compared to the money that will flow to him and his comrades as a result of
your deaths.Many commentators in recent
days have been discussing how a world war might begin, but Basanets’ article,
including in particular its impassioned rhetoric, is an indication of how
regimes or at least criminal regime policies in fact do: when those who are
called upon to support or implement them begin to ask questions about what
their sacrifices are in fact for.

Staunton, November 30 – Espionage
charges against Russian scholars are the tip of the iceberg of a much larger
problem, Andrey Rostovtsev says, that involves an effort by the FSB to take
control over financial flows in academic and other research institutions, the
insertion of unqualified people to head these bodies, and the use of the FSB by
such people to get their way.

But Rostovtsev says that he is
certain that at least some of these cases have been fabricated as part of an
effort by the FSB to gain control over these research and university centers or
to assist directors of such institutions who are working with the security
service and who may in some cases have sprung from its ranks to reinforce their
power.

“The
scientific sphere,” he continues, “is a reflection of what is taking place in
society as a whole. The goal of the state system is survival and the
strengthening of the power vertical, and exactly the same thing is taking place
in the administrative part of the scientific community: it seeks to hold on and
strengthen itself by broadening its authority … by any means.”

Sometimes
collective protest works, but individual complaints almost never do because of
the imbalance in power between the heads of institutes and individual scholars,
Rostovtsev continues. Scholars abroad are “already tired of this and react
quite sluggishly. More than that, Russia already for a long time hasn’t been
among the leaders of international scholarly interest.”

Research institutions may have seen their budgets reduced
this year, but they still constitute “an enormous resource,” one that the
government and the heads of these institutions want to maintain and control.
And the government is prepared to appoint people it can rely on even if they
are “far from science.”

To do that, the officials sometimes have to push some
scholars aside. In a relatively small number of cases, they have brought
charges against them; but in “tens of thousands” of cases, they have used
bureaucratic gamesmanship or other forms of pressure to push out those who won’t
go along with what the regimes, academic and political, want.